Notar/in (Civil-Law Notary)

Genuinely unlike anything else in this repo. A notary is appointed by the state to a public office, in a number fixed by assessed need and tied to a specific location, holds a legal monopoly over authenticating the transactions that matter most in German life, and charges fees set by statute with no room to compete on price at all.
Official title Notar/in
Protected title Yes — Bundesnotarordnung (BNotO)
Category commercial
Typical qualification Both state law examinations (Volljurist), then a state appointment
Appointing body The state justice administration
Regulated Yes — and the number of posts is capped
Last reviewed 2026-09

What only a notary may do

German law requires notarielle Beurkundung — authentication by a notary — for the transactions where the state has decided that advice and formality must be forced on the parties:

  • Land and property transactions. Every sale of a house or flat. No exceptions
  • Formation and share transfers of a GmbH, and most company-law resolutions
  • Marriage contracts, and agreements on the consequences of divorce
  • Erbverträge and many inheritance instruments
  • Acknowledgements of paternity, adoption consents
  • Grundbuch and Handelsregister applications, which pass through the notary

The notary is required to be impartial — advising both sides, not representing either — and to explain the legal consequences before anyone signs. That is the justification for the monopoly: the formality exists to protect the weaker party, and the office-holder is paid to be neutral.

No other profession in this repo holds a reserved activity this wide, and none of it can be done by a lawyer who is not also a notary.

Two systems, by Bundesland

This is the first thing to establish, because the career is completely different in each:

Nurnotariat Anwaltsnotariat
Who A full-time notary and nothing else A practising Rechtsanwalt who is also appointed as a notary
Where Most of Germany, including Bayern, Baden-Württemberg (since its reform), Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, the eastern states, Hamburg Parts of the north and west, including Niedersachsen, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Hessen, Berlin and parts of NRW
Route Notarassessor — a salaried preparatory service of several years after the state exams Practise as a lawyer for a qualifying period, then apply
Selection A ranked list, on exam grades plus a notarial examination Professional experience plus a notarial examination

Which system applies is fixed by the Bundesland, so — as with teaching, Besoldung and the Architektenkammern — the state decides the career, not the federation. See choosing a Bundesland.

The numerus clausus

Appointments are made only where a post exists. The state assesses the need for notarial services in a district and creates or withholds posts accordingly, so a vacancy generally arises only when someone retires or dies.

The consequences:

  • Entry is by competition for a specific location, not by qualifying in the abstract
  • You go where the post is. Geographic flexibility is a condition of the career
  • Exam grades matter for a very long time. The ranking that decides Notarassessor places rests heavily on the two state examinations, taken years earlier

It is the same rationing logic as the Kassensitz in psychotherapy, with one crucial difference: a notarial post is not bought and sold. It is a public office, allocated by the state. Whatever else can be said about the cap, it is not tradeable.

Fees — the exact opposite of the HOAI story

Notarial fees are fixed by the Gerichts- und Notarkostengesetz (GNotKG), scaled to the value of the transaction. A notary may not negotiate them, discount them, or waive them.

Put that beside Architekt/in, whose binding fee scale the European Court of Justice struck down in 2019 for restricting competition. The notarial tariff survives because a notary is not exercising a freely provided service — they hold a public office, and the fees are part of its regulation. Two professions, two fee schedules, two opposite legal outcomes in the same decade.

For the reader, the practical effect: every notary costs the same, so choose on competence and availability, and there is no point shopping around on price.

The route

  1. Jura, then the Erstes Staatsexamen
  2. Referendariat — the practical legal training — then the Zweites Staatsexamen. You are now a Volljurist
  3. In Nurnotariat states: apply for the Notarassessor service — salaried, several years, ranked entry — and sit the notarielle Fachprüfung
  4. In Anwaltsnotariat states: practise as a lawyer for the qualifying period, pass the notarial examination, apply when a post is advertised
  5. Appointment by the state justice administration, to a place

Above and alongside: Notarkammer membership is compulsory, and the pension runs through the Rechtsanwalts- or Notarversorgung, not the statutory scheme.

Pay

Market estimate, and unusually hard to generalise, because a notary is an office-holder running an office: the income is fee revenue minus the cost of premises and staff.

Stage Gross/month
Notarassessor (salaried preparatory service) €4,500 – €6,000
Newly appointed notary, smaller district Highly variable; the office’s costs come first
Established notary High — commonly well into six figures annually, before tax and office costs
Anwaltsnotar Law practice income plus notarial fees

Two honest qualifications. Fee income tracks property transaction volumes and company formations, so it fell materially in the 2022–2024 property downturn. And the Notarfachangestellte/r staff who run the office — an Ausbildung closely related to Rechtsanwaltsfachangestellte/r — are a real and scarce cost: notarial offices compete for them.

Demand and outlook

Capped by design, and therefore stable. The number of notaries does not respond to demand, which insulates the profession from competition and also from growth.

  • Succession is the opportunity. A substantial share of notaries reach retirement this decade, and posts in rural and smaller districts are the ones that go unfilled — the same pattern as rural dentistry.
  • Digitalisation has arrived: online GmbH formation and electronic authentication procedures now exist, with notarial involvement retained rather than removed. The office changed; the monopoly did not.
  • Transaction volumes are the cyclical variable.

Foreign candidates

Be clear-eyed: this is among the least accessible professions here, and the obstacle is the German legal qualification, not nationality.

  1. You need both German state law examinations. There is no equivalence route for a foreign law degree into the notarial office — German substantive law is the qualification.
  2. Nationality is no longer the barrier it was. Following a 2011 European Court of Justice ruling that the nationality requirement breached freedom of establishment, Germany amended the BNotO, and EU citizens may be appointed. Third-country nationals cannot.
  3. Language: native-level German. The office consists of drafting, reading aloud and explaining legal instruments, and of being understood by people who are not lawyers.
  4. A realistic alternative for foreign-trained lawyers is the Notarfachangestellte/r route into a notarial office, or qualifying as a Rechtsanwalt through the European lawyers’ routes, which do exist where the notarial ones do not.
  5. Visa: §18b for legal employment generally; the notarial appointment itself is a public office, not a visa route.

Pitfalls

  • Decide the Bundesland before the career. Nurnotariat and Anwaltsnotariat are different professional lives.
  • Exam grades from your twenties follow you for a decade in the Nurnotariat ranking.
  • You will move to where a post is, possibly to a small town.
  • The office is a business with fixed prices. Costs are the only variable you control.
  • Impartiality is the job. A notary who thinks of the paying party as a client has misunderstood the office, and the professional supervision takes that seriously.

Sources

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